Forest destruction

[Lisbeth]

Amazon deforestation rises by 22%

ats - 19 novembre 2021

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by almost 22% between August 2020 and July 2021, compared to the previous period, setting a record in the last 15 years. This is indicated by an official estimate published yesterday.

Logging in the world's largest rainforest totalled 13,235 square kilometres in the period 2020-2021, the highest since 2005-2006 (14,286 square kilometres), according to data from the National Research Institute's PRODES Deforestation Monitoring System Space (INPE) of Brazil.

https://www.cdt.ch/mondo/amazzonia-sale ... fresh=true

[Richprins]

[Lisbeth]

How a humble mushroom could save forests and fight climate change

January 31, 2022 | Paul W Thomas, Honorary Professor Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling


The blue milk cap mushroom is a rich source of protein. laerke_lyhne , CC BY-SA

The conversion of forests to agricultural land is happening at a mind-boggling speed. Between 2015 and 2020, the rate of deforestation was estimated at around 10 million hectares every year.

Compared to 2012, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is predicting a massive increase in agricultural demand of 50% by 2050. In South America, around 71% of rainforest has been replaced by pasture and a further 14% has been lost to the production of animal feed. One of the key successes of COP26 was a pledge from world leaders to end deforestation by 2030.

From a climate and carbon point of view, we know that cutting down trees at this scale is devastating. But the impacts run deeper: 75% of the world’s accessible fresh water arises from forested watersheds. And with 80% of the world’s population facing a threat to their water security, trees play a very significant role in stemming desertification and preventing soil erosion. They also protect against flooding in coastal areas as well as being home to a huge number of species, many of which are important crop pollinators.

phpBB [video]

So what can we do? We know that different foods have different footprints. Reducing the quantity of animal-based products will have a huge impact. In fact, eating less meat is one of the most potent changes that people in the west can make to help save the planet.

But what if we could go further? What if, instead of having farming and forestry in direct conflict, we could develop a system that allows food production and forest on the same parcel of land?

Miraculous mushrooms

This is exactly what our latest research focuses on, looking at fungi that grow in partnership with trees, in a mutually beneficial arrangement. This is a common association and some species can produce large mushroom fruiting bodies, such as the highly prized truffle. Aside from this delicacy, cultivation of these species is a new and emerging field. But progress is especially being made in one group known as milk caps, that include a beautiful and unusually bright blue species known as Lactarius indigo, or the blue milk cap.

High in dietary fibre and essential fatty acids, this edible mushroom’s blue pigmentation means they are easy to identify safely. With extracts demonstrating antibacterial properties and an ability to kill cancer cells, the blue milk cap could also be a source of pharmacological potential.


Graphic showing the process of inoculating tree saplings with the fungus of the blue milk cap mushroom.
Paul Thomas/University of Stirling, Author provided

In our paper, we describe how to cultivate this species, from isolation in the lab to creating young tree saplings with roots inoculated with this symbiotic fungus. These trees can then be planted at scale in suitable climate zones ranging from Costa Rica to the US. As the tree and fungus’s partnership matures, they start to produce these incredible mushrooms packed with protein.

The agriculture on cleared forested land is dominated by pastoral beef production where around 4.76-6.99kg of protein per hectare per year is produced. But, if this system was replaced with planting trees hosting the milk cap fungus, the same parcel of land could produce 7.31kg of protein every year. The mushrooms can be consumed fresh, processed or the protein content can be extracted to produce other food items.

This would lead to more food production, with all the benefits forests bring and without the environmental burdens of intensive farming such as fertiliser, water use or the growing of additional feed. Beef farming contributes to climate change by emitting greenhouse gases, but as these fungus-inoculated trees grow, they draw down carbon from the atmosphere, helping in our fight against the climate crisis. So, as well as producing more food, the process can also enhance biodiversity, aid conservation, act as a carbon sink for greenhouses gases and help stimulate economic development in rural areas.


An aerial view of a burning deforested piece of land next to a strip of rainforest
Forests are still being bulldozed to make way for agricultural land for beef production. Richard Whitcombe/Shutterstock

In Mexcio, harvesting is often a family activity where fungi are traded informally or exchanged for goods and in neighbouring Guatemala, the blue milk cap is listed as one of the most popular edible mushrooms. So there is economic potential and community empowerment at a smaller local scale as well as trading opportunities for national and international corporations.

We believe this approach is cheaper – or more cost effective – than beef farming. But this is a new technology and like all new innovations, support is needed. This means further research and proper financial investment to develop the technology to a point where agribusinesses feel confident to invest at scale.

But even with support, there must also be demand for the end product. Doubtless with health and environmental concerns in mind, the proportion of meat eaters who have reduced or limited the amount of meat they consume has risen from 28% in 2017 to 39% in 2019, according to market research. And sales of meat-free foods are expected to reach £1.1 billion by 2024. Clearly there’s a market, as ordinary people endeavour to do their bit for the planet. With so much at stake we must urgently pursue the promising options that fungi provide.

[Richprins]

Please let it work!

[Lisbeth]

Deforestation in 2021 caused greenhouse gas increases equivalent to India’s annual fossil fuel emissions


Global deforestation (Photo: Unsplash / Ales Krivec)

By Ethan van Diemen | 28 Apr 2022

The pledge to drastically slow global deforestation was met with a metaphorical roll of the eye, when announced at the most recent UN climate conference. It was a pledge made before, but deforestation increased. Now it's happened again.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Despite pledges and lofty announcements to halt and reverse deforestation, the phenomenon continued apace with the loss of 11.1 million hectares (ha) of primary old-growth forest in tropical regions in 2021. The result has been an increase of 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions – equivalent to the annual fossil fuel emissions of India, the world’s third largest emitter.

The news emerges from a recently released research report by the World Resources Institute (WRI). The report is a collaboration between the WRI and the Global Land Analysis and Discovery laboratory at the University of Maryland.


Source: World Resources Institute

During Cop26 in Glasgow, Scotland, at the end of 2021, more than 100 global leaders pledged to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by the end of the decade. It was backed by the leaders of Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which collectively account for 85% of the world’s forests.

The pledge, however, is essentially a rehash of a similar pact made in 2014 to end deforestation, which yielded little in the way of results, with the years following marked by increased deforestation. The findings of the new WRI report suggest that despite updated pledges and notable progress in some countries, the trajectory is headed in much the same direction.

Despite the pledge being backed by their respective leaders, Brazil, the DRC and Bolivia made up the lion’s share of forest loss, with more than 40% of the total forest loss happening in Brazil alone at 1.5 million ha. The WRI report continues that the rate of primary forest loss in Brazil has been “persistently high”in the past several years and that “loss related to fires” has “fluctuated depending on the level of out-of-control forest fires, most recently with a spike in 2020 in the Amazon and the Pantanal.”

It adds that “non-fire losses” – which in Brazil are most often associated with agricultural expansion – increased by 9% from 2020 to 2021. The western Brazilian Amazon is identified in the report as having faced an “intensification of primary forest loss”, with its key states experiencing greater than 25% increases in non-fire loss from 2020 to 2021.

Back in Africa, the report notes that nearly half a million hectares of primary forest of the DRC was lost in 2021 due to the “expansion of small-scale agriculture and harvesting trees to meet energy demands”.

Ten football pitches a minute

The report notes that “of particular concern are the 3.75 million ha of loss that occurred within tropical primary rainforests — areas of critical importance for carbon storage and biodiversity — equivalent to a rate of 10 football pitches a minute”. The authors continue that “tropical primary forest loss in 2021 resulted in 2.5 Gt of carbon dioxide emissions.” Put differently, tropical forest loss in 2021 was equivalent to about two and a half times as much as emitted by passenger cars and light trucks in the US each year.


Source: World Resources Institute

Rod Taylor, global director of the forests programme at WRI, told The Guardian that while there are indications that global rates of forest loss appear to be plateauing, they still need to dramatically decrease for the world to meet climate targets.

“When you look at unchanging year-on-year statistics, you could conclude that they don’t really offer a newsworthy headline. But when it comes to the loss of primary tropical forests, stubbornly persistent rates relate to the climate, the extinction crisis and the fate of many first peoples. High rates of loss continue despite pledges from countries and companies,” Taylor said.

While the report highlights the gulf between words and action, in the wake of extreme weather disasters, it might also serve as a timely reminder that protecting forests is in everyone’s interest. OBP/DM

[Lisbeth]

Euro Parliament’s landmark deforestation regulation a crucial step in protecting the world’s threatened forests

By Roland Ngam | 27 Apr 2023

What we have witnessed over the last couple of decades with the rampant destruction of millions of hectares of forest cover for profit is quite simply untenable. Urgent action is way overdue, and if anything, the proposed EU law does not go far enough.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The European Parliament has adopted a landmark regulation on commodities and products associated with global deforestation and forest degradation.

With the new Deforestation Regulation, the European Union Parliament seeks to ban operators from placing on the EU market and exporting from the EU products containing, fed with or made using commodities that are not deforestation-free, have not been produced in accordance with the relevant legislation of the country of production and are not covered by a due-diligence statement.

The regulation specifically targets a number of problem commodities, including cattle, cocoa, coffee, rubber, palm oil, soya and timber. Companies dealing in these products will be required to prove that their products are not sourced from deforested land or land with forest degradation, or risk heavy fines and sanctions.

With the new regulation, there is a bigger attempt to attack the problem from the consumer side of the equation. The calculation is that if you cut off the retail outlets supplying these products to millions of EU consumers, farmers in producer countries will not have the reason or resources to cut down trees.

The Deforestation Regulation will now move up to the European Union Council and if adopted into law, it will be used to combat deforestation in reliable global carbon capture and storage treasures like the Congo Basin, Amazon and Greater Mekong Rainforests.

Prior to this, the EU had also adopted measures such as the 2005 European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan (FLEGT) and the promotion of sustainable forest management practices (the EU Timber Regulation 995 of 2010) to address illegal logging and related trade.

Shortly after the Deforestation Regulation text was released, Malaysia’s Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities, Fadillah Yusof, came out guns blazing, accusing the EU of protectionism: “The (law) is unjust and serves primarily to protect a domestic oilseeds market that is inefficient and cannot compete with Malaysia’s efficient and productive palm oil exports.”

Minister Fadillah Yusof’s press statement is laughable.

The fact is that what we have witnessed over the last couple of decades with the rampant destruction of millions of hectares of forest cover for profit is quite simply untenable. Something urgent had to be done, and if anything, the proposed law does not go far enough.

Deforestation and forest degradation: the problem areas

Let us take a look at some of the destruction that the world has witnessed over the last half-century.

In Latin America, the Amazon has lost almost 20% of its rainforest. More recently, it has been losing over 10,000 acres (4,050ha) a day, a phenomenon that accelerated under former president Jair Bolsonaro. Beef is the number one driver of deforestation in the Amazon and the Washington Post recently did a number of exposés on the topic, showing that the United States of America was the biggest buyer of this product.

According to WWF, “the forest conversion it generates more than doubles that generated by the production of soy, palm oil, and wood products (the second, third, and fourth biggest drivers) combined.”

In Asia, the number one driver of deforestation is undoubtedly palm oil. Vast tracts of virgin forest have been cut down in Malaysia and Indonesia to feed the world’s addiction to palm oil (Indonesia supplies more than half of the world’s palm oil). Indonesia and other countries like Vietnam and India have also cleared swathes of forest land to set up coffee and tea estates.

Following the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement (ICA) quota system in the early 1990s, Vietnam’s coffee production skyrocketed from just under 2 million bags in the early 1990s to over 30 million bags today. Neighbouring Indonesia’s production also shot up from 3 million bags in the 90s to over 10 million bags today. The new land for coffee production came primarily from forests. Europe consumes a lot of Vietnamese and Indonesian coffee.

In Africa, deforestation is mainly driven by cocoa, palm oil and rubber. A number of countries like Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana have significantly expanded their cocoa and rubber acreage to leverage the commodity boom that started in the early 2000s.

Cocoa plantations typically belong to Africans, but deforestation for large-scale commercial rubber and palm oil farms is mainly driven by major global biodiesel players like Herakles and Socfin/Bolloré.

Socfin/Bolloré is active in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sao Tome & Principe, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. Its products are not consumed in Africa; the primary destination markets for its biofuels are the EU market, the US and Asia.

Fossil fuels have recently become a prime driver of deforestation. The Democratic Republic of Congo has issued exploration permits to find oil in the Congo Basin following recent finds in neighbouring Uganda.

Local communities under attack

Governments pay scant attention to the needs of indigenous people and local communities when they award concessions for large-scale commercial farms in forests. Through the colonial hangover of eminent domain laws, modern states almost never recognise customary tenure and the general attitude is that customary land is free land and therefore the property of the state. For this reason, local communities are generally not compensated when evictions occur.

Land grabs are a major problem in Africa where corrupt politicians have no hesitation in carving out and selling off large tracts of land to foreign investors. In many cases, villagers just wake up one morning and find out that their land has been sold off to somebody from a country they have never even heard of. When communities resist land grabbing by big foreign interests, they are brutalised, jailed and sometimes even hunted down and murdered by their own governments.

In Cameroon, the government sold off part of a village and forest reserve to Herakles without the knowledge or support of local communities.

In Tanzania, leaders from Maasai villages in Loliondo recently petitioned 16 embassies to help “swiftly neutralise the violent situation” as tensions rise over the government’s plans to “evict thousands of pastoralists from their ancestral lands to make way for conservation, trophy hunting and safari tourism”, according to the Mail & Guardian. In this case, the buyers were from the Middle East. Nationals of United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi are particularly active in East Africa.

In Madagascar, South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics has negotiated a 99-year lease on some 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) of farmland that belongs to poor, defenceless villagers to produce rice for the Korean market.

There are stories like this everywhere in Africa.

Why we must protect our forests

Forests are incredibly important for a number of reasons. Firstly, forests help to filter air and filter water.

Secondly, they are important for carbon capture and storage. It is widely recognised that the world’s forests hold over one trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Together with peatlands, they play a role that geoengineering may never be able to replicate.

Although we have always paid only little attention to the Sahel-Sudan region, new research by an international team including Nasa scientists found that the over 10 billion trees in this area store just under 1 billion metric tonnes of carbon. This seems small, but it is still an important asset for humanity.

Thirdly, the forest is the home of many indigenous communities including the Maya (Amazon) and the Baka (Gabon, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon and Congo DRC), These communities rely on forests for food, sustenance, medication, etc.

Fourthly, forests are important areas of biodiversity. With every hectare that is cleared, the world loses many insects, animals and microorganisms, sometimes forever. Many orang-utan shelters have sprung up in Indonesia to care for orang-utans displaced by deforestation, but still unknown is the number of orang-utans or other less visible but equally important species that have died at the hands of farm workers.

Imagine living in a world in which we have lost most of our insects and we have to resort to the absurd spectacle that plays out in the US every year, with bee entrepreneurs shipping their bees from one farm to another to help pollinate crops. How sustainable is this?

A global effort is essential

We know why forests are disappearing every day: consumers in developed markets are addicted to cheap coffee and beef. If the world were to suddenly cut off cheap beef, coffee and soy imports, that would work miracles for forests.

It is difficult to gauge what impact the Deforestation Regulation is going to have at this stage for an important reason: many parts of the developing world, especially emerging economies, already have the capacity to absorb some of the products that the EU is going to cut off. The EU Parliament’s efforts are incredibly important — but the world must work together for any significant, long-lasting improvement to happen.

Senator Ajuoh Honoré from the Social Democratic Front party in Cameroon’s Upper House of Assembly believes that only a global compact can roll back deforestation: “Tough measures by some blocs are important, but we need multilateralism — we need the world to come together to save our rain forests. Unless this is done, then the EU’s decision would have been in vain. What stops a permit holder who used to sell to the EU from simply shifting their business to China? That is the real issue!”

There is a growing demand for edible oils in Africa where countries imported over eight million tonnes of palm oil in 2020. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Indonesia limited exports of palm oil exports, a sign that it can absorb a lot of its production.

Similarly, African timber, which used to go mainly to Europe, has witnessed a rise in demand from Asia, especially China that imports over $3-billion worth of tropical timber from Congo Basin rainforest countries annually. Every day, the people of Dolizie in the Republic of Congo and Batouri in Cameroon witness helplessly as their tropical trees are cut down by the hundreds and shipped out on logging trucks.

These developments highlight the need for the world to work together for a global solution. The COP28 final document, Section XIV paragraph 47 states that: “In the context of the provision of adequate and predictable support to developing country Parties, Parties should collectively aim to slow, halt and reverse forest cover and carbon loss, in accordance with national circumstances, consistently with the ultimate objective of the Convention, as stated in its Article 2”.

This is a call for the world to emulate the strong measures that the EU is putting in place. As Africa’s regional economic communities work to build the African Continental Free Trade Area, they must also build strong measures to protect forests in all their decisions. DM

[Lisbeth]

Kenya - Baobab uprooted and exported, government alarm

The trees of several tons and that can have even more than a thousand years are loaded on ships at the port of Mombasa.


©WIKIPEDIA

It is alarm in Kenya for the uprooting of dozens of iconic baobab trees that for two months now are loaded on ships at the port of Mombasa for export.

These specimens weigh several tons and can be even more than a thousand years old. After the intervention of the environmentalists, yesterday also the Kenyan Environment Minister, Soipan Tuya, asked the Kilifi County Government to protect the baobab trees, stating that their export is equivalent to the trade in genetic resources, which should be governed by the Nagoya Convention on Biological Diversity, the international instrument on trade in genetic resources, to which Kenya is a signatory.

The dripping started after last month Georgian entrepreneur Georgy Gvasaliya admitted the purchase by a private individual of two baobabs in Kilifi County and their uprooting to transport them to a theme park in the capital Tbilisi. According to the ministry, this license would have been obtained «irregularly», reports the newspaper The East African.

The governor of Kilifi, Gideon Mung'aro, in the wake of exports, has warned farmers who intend to sell baobabs and buyers from severe lawsuits. "Kilifi’s land is already bare because of massive logging for coal production, and we are now uprooting the baobab for export. Unfortunately, we are selling our shrines and our places of worship", he said.